


you and me, all the way home

by orphan_account



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Domestic, Established Relationship, Fluff, Living Together, M/M, Snuggling, pillow forts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-07
Updated: 2013-07-07
Packaged: 2017-12-18 01:17:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,361
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/874030
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stiles finds Derek in the aisle with the table linens.</p><p>Or, the one where they find a home in each other, with each other.</p>
            </blockquote>





	you and me, all the way home

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for the lovely Darien a couple of months back, as part of a birthday project for her friend. The prompt was 'domestic Sterek'... I legit do not know where the angst came from. Title is from the wonderful Frank Sinatra.
> 
> Also, Derek/trusting somebody is my OTP <3

Stiles finds Derek in the aisle with the table linens, staring at a delicate lace pattern with a look of frozen terror on his face. 

For a second, Stiles just stares at him. His werewolf boyfriend —mate? Lover?— stands among floral cloths and pristine napkins, looking too wild for the bizarrely normal setting. Derek’s shoulders are set in a tense line, his hands forming angry fists, and just for a second he looks a lot like the Derek Hale Stiles met in the woods way back when. It’s horrible. Stiles’ heart breaks a tiny bit to see it. He knows the second Derek realises Stiles has found him, though; Derek inhales once, slowly, and then hangs his head a little, staring resolutely in the opposite direction. 

Once upon a time, it might have worked, and Stiles might have left him to his brooding. Maybe six years ago, when he was actually afraid of Derek hurting him every time Stiles opened his big mouth. Maybe even four years ago, before Stiles and Derek had kissed for the first time, or fucked for the first time, or pulled their heads out of their asses and said I’m sorry and I need you and I love you for the first time — but not now. 

Now Stiles doesn’t hesitate to take Derek’s hand, to uncurl Derek’s fingers from where his claws cut crescents into his palms.

“Are you okay?” he asks, quietly, and the tension bleeds out of Derek in a rush of air, as Derek squeezes his hand back.

“I was just thinking,” Derek replies, his voice rough and a little unsteady. “My mom used to have a tablecloth like this. She used to pull it out for Thanksgiving with all of the good china.”

After four years, Stiles is no longer surprised by Derek’s willingness to talk to him about his family, but it punches him in the gut all the same, to remember all of aspects of a life that Derek must have lost to the fire. It’s not quite the same as Stiles and his mother, and he knows that. He, at the very least, had her perfume and her books and her trinkets to remember her by.

“Oh,” he says. Then, more hesitantly, “do you want to talk about it?”

The thing is, Derek has seemed happy all week, in a way that's such an aberration from the broken man in the woods back then. It’s been sort of cathartic, Stiles thinks, like they’re starting anew. They officially moved in at the weekend, and had spent the past seven days beginning to build a home together— picking out crockery patterns and bed linen and shower curtains— and okay, yeah, it’s been sort of overwhelming, but it’s the happiest Stiles has ever been. 

It has been perfect, actually; play-fighting with Derek and rolling around flicking paint at each other, breaking in their ridiculously large bed and pressing each other up against every available surface, until the house begins to smell of StilesandDerek and home.

This moment does not belong with the others.

Derek shakes his head, now, turning to give Stiles a feeble smile.

“I don’t,” he says. “Not right now.” 

He kisses Stiles then, a brief press of his mouth that Stiles can only interpret as a full stop. 

“Okay,” he says, and he knows that’s all he’s going to get.

“I’m thinking we need to choose some curtains for the bedrooms,” because they do, and because he can’t stop staring at the flecks of blue paint in Derek’s hair.  
He leads Derek away from the linens, and doesn’t let go of his hand.

\--

Nobody but Stiles was surprised when Derek broached the topic of moving in together. Later, Scott would give him an incredulous look and say dude, you already kept more clothes in his loft than Derek did. Lydia would purse her lips at him and say don’t take that hideous blue couch and spend a whole afternoon trying to show Stiles the difference between Tiffany blue and teal. But Derek asked, wringing his hands and looking at the floor as Stiles’ heart beat a frantic tattoo because we need to talk is always a precursor to something horrible. When Stiles finally understood — finally saw the new keys that Derek held out to him, painfully earnest and vulnerable — his smile was big and bright, and Derek’s lips twitched in what could only be relief.

\--

The ride home from Bed Bath and Beyond is a quiet one; it’s not an awkward silence, but Stiles feels his hands twitch as he reigns in the urge to say something. It’s like an itch that he knows will hurt to scratch, but Stiles can’t help but wonder if Derek is actually ready for this. 

It’s not at all like before. It’s not Stiles taking up room in a dusty, sparse loft, or making a space for himself between purple sheets. It’s a house, and it’s theirs, and it’s a kind of ridiculously huge commitment for somebody just out of college and somebody as fucked up as Derek, but Stiles wants it more than anything he’s ever wanted before.  
And if Derek asked him, doesn’t that mean he wants it too?

That night Derek cooks for the two of them, humming to himself in front of the newly-installed stove. The shadows of the day appear to have lifted, and Stiles sits at the breakfast bar admiring the way the fading light dances across Derek’s shoulder blades in his tank top. Stiles picks at the paint on his fingernails and runs down the checklist Lydia sent him, of things to be bought for the house.

He hovers over ‘tableware’ and scrubs through it, figuring that what Lydia doesn’t know can’t hurt her.

\--

Derek clings to Stiles like an octopus in his sleep. 

It’s funny, really. Stiles falls asleep on his own side of the bed with an arm thrown carelessly over Derek’s chest, but wakes to find his limbs tangled up in strong arms and legs, the blankets in a useless heap at the end of the bed. Sometimes he likes to think it’s so that Derek can remind himself Stiles is there, that he’s not alone anymore, that they got through all the hard stuff. Other times he closes his eyes with a soft smile, relishing in the feel of Derek’s warm body all around him, and knowing that this is what it feels like to be safe, and complete, and alive.

\--

Derek comes back from the store one afternoon, attempting to balance a bakery box with an armful of grocery bags. He calls out for Stiles, fondly exasperated to find an errant sneaker in his path as he shuffles towards the kitchen. 

“I can’t believe we agreed to host Isaac’s birthday party” he grumbles, hearing Stiles enter the room as he drops the bags onto the kitchen counter. “We’ve been living here for two weeks, nothing is going to be ready.”

A pair of arms encircle him from behind, and Derek sweeps a thumb across Stiles’ wrist before twisting around in his grasp. Stiles smiles at him — and Stiles does that a lot, but it doesn’t fail to make Derek feel warm and wanted — 

“Your betas lived in an abandoned rail station, dude,” he comments wryly, rubbing his nose along Derek’s jawline. “I don’t think they have high standards.”

It’s probably true. Derek chuckles, rubbing the back of Stiles’ neck and pulling him in for a long kiss, which Stiles eagerly reciprocates. And it’s good- it’s always good with the two of them. Stiles licks into Derek’s mouth languidly, pulling an appreciative noise from Derek’s throat, and Derek sighs into it, toying with the hem of Stiles’ t-shirt before he remembers that the groceries need to go in the refrigerator.

It’s not until he pulls away that he notices the flush of Stiles’ cheeks, and the messy tousle of his hair; Stiles kind of smells like exertion, and he looks a little bit like sex, but Derek knows it can’t be that. He tilts his head consideringly, seeing how Stiles twitches under his gaze.

“Everything okay?” he asks, teasing, but Stiles’ hackles go up and he looks a little embarrassed. At this point Derek trusts him enough that it only serves to make him curious. 

“Um,” Stiles says, “yep. I just thought you’d be out a little longer than you were.”

Derek’s fingers press lightly against Stiles’ hip. Mostly he wonders what he nearly walked in on.

“Okay. And do I want to know what you were doing?”

Stiles is full-on blushing now, and Derek wants to laugh pretty badly. He settles for running a hand through Stiles’ hair as he avoids looking Derek in the eye. In that moment, Derek’s heart fills fit to burst, knowing that he will spend forever with this wonderful, ridiculous man.

Derek loves him.

\--

Neither of them are good at early nights. Stiles has been away at college for four years, and has almost forgotten what it is like to go to bed before midnight. Derek likes the dark, and always has. It makes him feel less like he has to hide.

They have to adjust to being in each other’s space all the time, again, but Stiles loves it. He loves the way Derek burrows into his side, cradling leather-bound books to his chest and smiling as he scents the smell of old paper. Derek gets used to the tap of Stiles’ fingers across a keyboard as he emails his friends back in Boston, and the tap of Stiles’ cold feet against his ankles. He brings Stiles sweet tea in the mornings, knowing that he can’t stand the taste of coffee, and Stiles can’t help the pleased grin on his face when Scott notes how much he smells like Derek’s again, beneath the paint fumes and forest.

They bicker over color swatches and the fact that Derek wants a giant, fancy-pants bath tub, and when they go to dinner with the sheriff Derek doesn’t miss the way the older Stilinski smiles at him, like he’s family.

It feels like a thank you, somehow.

\--

“Don’t get mad,” Stiles says, “but I kind of maybe built a fort in the living room.”

It’s not exactly what Derek expected.

“You did what?” he asks. Then, “show me”. It’s not the strangest thing Stiles has ever said, but it’s also not the sexy prelude Derek had imagined.

Groceries forgotten, Derek allows Stiles to lead him out of the kitchen, and he stops and stares when he sees what Stiles has done.

The chairs from the dining room have been appropriated to form walls, and a large white sheet hangs haphazardly over them. Actually- no. It’s two white sheets, Derek sees, tied into place at various junctures. The space under the sheets is littered with pillows- from Stiles’ college bed, from the sofa, and even the ugly cushions Isaac had brought for the abandoned blue couch back at the loft. Derek snorts at the sight; there, in the middle, is his old purple satin duvet set. Peter had convinced him to buy it as a joke during the alpha pack debacle — claiming it would appeal to Derek’s ‘lady friends’ — and Stiles had fallen in love with it. Derek doesn’t know how Stiles managed to sneak it into the boxes headed for the new house, though he has to admit he finds it stupidly endearing.

“Um, surprise?” Stiles says nervously, searching Derek’s face for clues. “I’m sorry, I know it’s kind of lame, but I thought we could talk here and it could kind of be a safe space-“  
Derek cuts him off with an incredulous look. “You built a den in our living room.”

Stiles lets his mouth fall shut and nods, still nervous. Derek scrubs a hand through his hair, feeling confused. And, okay, also kind of alarmed.

“Why did you build a den in our living room?”

Stiles shakes his head, pulling Derek into the cramped space. They lie among the pillows, facing each other, and Stiles sighs, taking a deep breath as Derek pulls the satin comforter over them both.

“I saw the look on your face last week with the whole tablecloth thing, and… I’ve been thinking about it a lot. And I love you and I just want to make sure you’re not doing something you’re not ready for.” It all comes out in a rush, and Derek knows that he’s serious, that Stiles has been worried, but he can’t help but smile. Because he can’t help but feel lucky: his boyfriend — his lover, his mate, his partner — would do this for him. Because Stiles is constantly showing him he loves him. And Derek trusts him, in a way he’d always told himself he’d never trust anybody again.

They lay there for hours, Derek talking himself hoarse about his family, trying to explain what it means to finally have a home again. Stiles listens, tracing lines over Derek’s body with his fingertips until Derek has no option but to hold him down and kiss him, feeling impossibly full of love and light and hope. 

Derek has to go to the store again because the milk is warm and the ice has melted. It doesn’t matter: Stiles relaxes into Derek’s arms and they stay in their fort until the sheets come down on top of them and Derek finally succumbs to laughter. 

\--

The entire pack swarm the house for Isaac’s birthday. And Derek is right, because the house isn’t ready, but Stiles is right too; it’s a home, and that feels like enough.

Isaac races Scott to the biggest cupcake, and Lydia raises a perfectly-sculpted eyebrow at the silk cushions on the sofa — another gift from Peter, though Stiles will refuse to admit to the man’s good taste. Boyd and Cora talk quietly by the loveseat, and Allison watches with a smile as Danny and Ethan carry Isaac’s presents into the house.

For a second, Derek and Stiles pause in the doorway, turning to look at each other.

Derek’s lip twitches, curving into a slow smile that has Stiles’ heart beating faster.

And Stiles loves him.

**Author's Note:**

> Come find me on tumblr: eyebrowymanpain


End file.
